Hermes's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Hermes landed hard on the steps of his domed atrium, breath ragged, sandals smoking. Another run between Olympus and the underworld. Another route that felt slow. He needed the fastest path, and guessing wasn't working anymore. Inside, his ram waited by the great leather map, golden bags heavy with fresh scrolls. Hermes unrolled the parchment across the floor. Red and gold ink branched in tangled veins. "Somewhere on this thing," he muttered to the ram, "a stretch is bleeding me dry. Like a cracked jar I keep refilling." He set up two marker stones at the atrium's threshold, one for departure, one for return. His winged staff would do the rest. He whispered to the snakes coiled along the wood, and the wings began to beat in slow, steady counts. A living clock. Every stretch of road would now have a number beside it. Hermes ran the route again, then again, pausing at each marked node to let the staff log the count. The ram trotted the shorter legs himself, scrolls swinging. By the fourth run, the numbers stopped lying. One stretch — the long descent past the gates between worlds — cost him more time than all the others combined. He pinned the map to the atrium wall and circled the bleeding stretch in red. "Found you," he said quietly. The guessing was over. But now he had a worse problem: the slowest part of his route was the one he couldn't simply fly around.